Bloopers, Outtakes, and Deleted Scenes
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Multi-ship. Many Characters. OCs too. This is a place for one shots and drabbles/scenes from all my stories. It's multi ship since I write multi ship, but each chapter is carefully labelled so that you can choose what you read and don't from a variety of ships/characters/and plot lines. Come enjoy something from an old favorite or try something new without the commitment!
1. Introduction

**This is just a brief Introduction so that everyone knows what to expect. I don't really know where else to put it, so I'm just making it the first chapter of this.**

**This is not a proper story. It's a collection of scenes/one shots. Basically, it will consist of several different kinds of things, all gathered together so that each doesn't have to be an individual story and I'll know where to put them. Because, until now, I haven't been sure where to put any of the things when they're requested or suggested.**

**It may consist of rewritten scenes from stories I've already done. So that may be that something went one way, but could have gone another. The "other" way may be put here.**

**It may consist of "deleted scenes". These would be scenes that didn't make it in for one reason or other. It could be because they didn't really fit with the flow of the story, weren't really necessary, or for whatever reason I simply decided not to include them.**

**It may also consist of simply some random "what if" scenes. One shots that maybe had no particular place to go in a story but could have gone into it. Usually, though, they're one shots that really wouldn't or couldn't stand alone. **

**They may be romantic/sexual, or they may simply be everyday scenes exploring some aspect or another of any given relationship. They don't have to be main ships. Some will feature OCs. **

**In the title of each entry, there will be some identification of the story that it relates to (if there is one) that is usually abbreviations of the title and then there will be the characters involved in the scene. That way, if you don't like a ship or character you can avoid it. Also, that way, if you don't like the story (because of a ship) but you're interested in the ship that's actually in the scene, you can read it and not be really bothered with that which you don't care for. **

**If there's no story title there, it probably means that the scene didn't really come from a story but really isn't a stand-alone one shot. The characters, however, will still be identified.**

**At the beginning of each entry, there will be an Author's Note that will provide some context of where it comes from (if it comes from a story), some brief/pertinent character information, and any other basic information that you may need to understand the scene if you're reading it alone and outside of its context. You're welcome to skip that, of course, as you're welcome to skip everything else, but it may be of some assistance. **

**So, since this is just a "collection" story, it won't be updated regularly. It'll be updated when there's something to add to it. That's about all the regularity that I can promise. **

**If you're interested in seeing something, or bothered that you didn't see something you wanted to see in a story, drop me a line in a private message and let me know. I'll see what I can do about getting something for you. **

**If you don't read, no hard feelings. I just wanted a place to put these out there for those who might be interested. If you do read, as always, I hope you enjoy! **


	2. What Future Is There? - Sadie and Beau

**AN: So this was one that, some time back, several people said that they wanted to see. It is sort of a different take on Chapter 88 of What Future is There? This is just Sadie/Beau. No other characters are present.**

**Sadie is deaf. She's a forty-something, single adoptive mother of one child who lost her whole family (a husband and her five children) when the world changed. Beau is a twenty something young man from a working class family who lost everyone as well and survived on his own for some time before landing with the group. He's very smart about surviving in their world, but formally uneducated and innocent. Almost immediately, he develops a crush on Sadie, but she cares for him as a friend. **

**Within the story, he gives her a kiss. She turns him down, wishing him well and sending him away, basically. They remain very close friends, and it's unclear if his crush for her every entirely fades.**

**Some people wanted to see it written differently, where Sadie accepted the kiss, and since the request was made I've been interested in writing it myself.**

**So this is "another take" on that, written to satisfy my curiosity and offered to anyone who might be interested.**

**If you choose to read, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Sadie had been down doing demolition work with some of the others. She finally excused herself, feeling disgusting. She had already brought down some water for a bath earlier and she knew it was waiting for her in her bedroom. Hopefully it was cool because she was burning up.

As she was walking down the street she felt a hand clamp onto her shoulder and she swung around, surprised to find Beau standing there, staring at her.

"Sorry I scared ya," Beau said. "Didn't mean ta do that."

Sadie smiled at him.

"It's OK," she said. "Do you need something?"

Beau smiled at her.

"Nah, I just figured I'd walk with ya, where you headed?" He asked.

Sadie couldn't understand Beau all the time. She was dripping sweat, sick of her own scent, and she felt cruddy with the caked on dirt, sawdust, and dust in general that got stirred up while they were working on demolition. She couldn't imagine where she'd be going besides in search of a bath. Still, she realized that Beau was probably just trying to make conversation, and he was sometimes awkward at that when it came to starting one with her.

"Home," she said, waving her hand in front of her nose to accentuate the way that she felt about her own smell at the moment. "I need a bath. I smell terrible."

Beau shifted uncomfortably for a moment, looking Sadie over.

"Yeah, I hear ya," Beau said. "You want me to go down an' get Carol to warm ya up some bath water?"

Sadie shook her head.

"No, it's too hot. I've got water, it'll be fine," she said. He was a sweet boy, and she appreciated that he always wanted to do something for her, but the last thing she wanted in this heat was hot water to bathe with. She would have preferred ice water if that were possible.

"Oh," Beau said. He stood there a moment longer and then dropped his head, turning away. Sadie realized that she had hurt his feelings, which had not been her intention at all.

"Beau," Sadie called. The boy stopped and turned back.

"Yeah?" He asked.

Sadie smiled at him, trying to let him know that she hadn't meant to hurt his feelings in any way.

"Thank you anyway," she said.

Beau smiled back at her.

"No problem, you wanna walk with me?" He asked. Sadie smiled, nodded, and trotted forward to catch up with him.

They walked in silence until they got to Sadie's porch. Sadie mounted the steps and turned back to Beau.

"Um…thank you for walking with me," Sadie said. "I'm going to take a bath now."

Beau lingered at the bottom a moment, holding to the post and looking at Sadie. She wasn't sure what he was waiting for or what he was going to do. She smiled again, shrugging a little, and turned toward her door, anxious to wash off.

"Wait," Beau said. "I got somethin' for ya." The boy bounded up the steps and was suddenly just in front of her. "Hold out your hand."

Sadie wondered what Beau was up to. This wasn't exactly the kind of society any longer where people gave each other gifts. There wasn't much use in that. If they wanted anything from one of the other houses, the simply took it. Still, she held her hand out. Beau dug awkwardly in his pocket for a moment and came out with something that he put into her palm.

Sadie turned the figure over, examining it. It was a small wooden giraffe, polished and smooth. She turned it over and over in her hand for a moment, not entirely understanding why he had given it to her.

"It's a giraffe," Beau said when she looked at him. "At least it's the best I could make. It's a lot better than the other two were. I sanded it down for ya, so it ain't got no rough sides nor nothin'. You won't get no splinters."

Sadie examined the wooden figure, turning it over in her hands again. She realized now that he had made the little giraffe, and had apparently put a great deal of effort into it. She wasn't sure how to react. She thought it was a precious gift, but she worried a little about what Beau had intended the animal to mean.

"It's beautiful," Sadie said. "You did very good." She smiled at him. She started to hand him the giraffe back, wondering if maybe she'd misunderstood. Maybe he was just showing her the little animal instead of actually _giving_ it to her. Maybe he just wanted to prove that he could make a tiny giraffe if he wanted.

"No! I made it for you," Beau said. "It's yours."

"Oh…thank you," Sadie said. She realized now that it was a gift. She looked down at it again, considering it and considering what she wanted to say to the boy. When she looked back at Beau, she was surprised when his lips came crashing roughly into hers, his hand suddenly tangled in her hair, pulling her mouth to him. She felt him probing her lips with his tongue, and his teeth scratched at her lips. Sadie struggled away from him, finally succeeding in separating them.

For a moment she stood there, unsure of what to say. Beau looked embarrassed, but he didn't move.

"What was that?" Sadie asked, trying not to look angry. She didn't want to frighten the boy, but she knew now that she was going to have to set him straight about the situation.

"I was…" Beau started. "I was just kissin' ya, but ya didn't let me finish."

Sadie took a deep breath and then sighed. Beau looked like he was getting ready to move in for another kiss, and she put her hands up, catching him on the shoulders.

"I like you, Beau," she said.

Beau smiled a little awkwardly.

"I like you too!" He said, his face showing an endearing amount of enthusiasm, but perhaps more than Sadie thought it should.

Sadie shook her head and his face fell a little.

"I mean I like you as a friend," Sadie said. "I like you like I like Mark. I like you like I like Michonne. I like to be friends with you, Beau, and I want us to be friends, but I don't want to be your girlfriend. I don't want you to kiss me."

Beau looked a little crushed and Sadie felt sorry for it.

"But I like you," Beau protested.

"Why?" Sadie asked Beau. "Why do you like me? What do you like about me?"

Beau shrugged and shifted his feet. Sadie reached out, putting her hand under his chin and tipping his face toward her again.

"I don't know. You're nice, and you're pretty," Beau said.

Sadie smiled.

"And you're a handsome young man, with a great personality. That's why we should be friends, but there's so much more, Beau, so much you haven't thought about. I have a baby now. Mark is a big part of my life. There's so much you don't know about me. I care about you, but not the way that you want me to. You'll find someone though, your own age, and you'll be happy with her," Sadie said.

"Them girls don't even pay me no attention," Beau said.

Sadie smiled at him again.

"Maybe it's because you haven't paid them any attention," Sadie said. "If you show them who you are, how wonderful you are, I bet you that they'd like you, and they _would _want to kiss you."

Beau nodded, but he still didn't look happy.

Sadie frowned in response.

Beau was a sweet young man. He was a good person. He cared about the people around him and she knew he was the kind of person that really any of the young women in the community—or even ones they hadn't met yet—would be lucky to have his affections. The only problem, perhaps, was that Beau wasn't all that good at some of the "smooth" things that were required to get their attention.

Conversation with him could be difficult to start, and difficult to keep going. The things that interested him weren't necessarily things that young ladies wanted to talk about—and even when he tried, he was reserved and halting with his words.

And though he had an excess of confidence in some areas of his life? He was sorely lacking in others.

But he was a sweet young man and maybe all he needed was the confidence—and maybe Sadie needed to give it to him.

After all, they hardly lived in a society where she'd be burned at the stake for teaching a twenty something year old boy a life lesson or two.

Sadie reached her hand up and touched his cheek, brushing her fingertips over the stubble there. Some of it was growing in from where he'd shaved that morning. Some of it was leftover from a poor job done shaving.

He looked at her and at once she could see his eyes light up, but she could also see something like panic. She could tell by looking at him that his breathing had changed—he wanted her to touch him, but he was afraid of her touch.

Sadie slipped her hand behind his head and pulled him toward her. He resisted at first but then, when she lifted herself on tiptoes to reach him, he ducked forward to meet her. She kissed him this time—softly. And it was nicer than the assault he'd made on her lips earlier. After a second, he relaxed into it a little. And she gave him a little more, licking his bottom lip until he took the hint and she swiped her tongue gently across his.

He responded. Too much enthusiasm nearly caused her to choke, but she didn't reprimand him. She just lowered herself on her toes enough to pull them apart, breaking the kiss.

She gestured.

"Go inside?" She asked.

And he followed, but it was clear that he was on the verge of panic. He might, if she wasn't careful, end up embarrassing himself. But it was better, if it was going to happen, to let him embarrass himself in the house, in private, with only her, because she didn't intend to judge him for it.

Inside, Sadie put the giraffe on the mantle piece of the house and then she waved at Beau, leading him to her bedroom. When she stepped into the room, she frowned at the mess. She didn't make her bed and her clothes were scattered about on the floor where she hadn't gathered them up yet to take for washing.

But if she wasn't going to judge him then she could hope that he wasn't going to judge her.

Unceremoniously, Sadie started to peel out of her clothes. Asking him to put in the effort of undressing her didn't seem fair. She went, ignoring him for a moment, directly to the bowl of cooled water and took the time to scrub herself clean with the soap and water there as she'd intended even before she'd brought Beau with her as an afterthought.

Without turning to see what he was doing, or really even to verify if he was in the room, she spoke to him.

"Come wash, Beau," Sadie said. "You smell—I'm sensitive. To smell."

She might not have known if he'd heard her or not if his hand hadn't appeared from behind her and touched hers even as she put the rag into the water to rinse it. He took it from her and she wished that she had clean water to offer him—but she hadn't asked to be prepared for guests.

She left him to wash and she went to the bed, not bothering to dry off because the heat would soon take care of the water on her and the sheets—and if she was lucky, it might be replaced with sweat, but even that thought might be putting too much pressure on the young man.

She watched Beau as he stripped, unashamed of his body and with good reason not to be ashamed of it, and washed himself the same way that she had.

His face was drawn up almost in pain from the panic. His chest heaved slightly, and she could see the repeated bobbing of his Adam's apple. But beyond that? There was no need to ask if he was interested. And there was no need to ask if he was anticipating what might happen here.

When he had washed, visibly shivering and his skin lightly peppered with chill bumps, Beau looked to Sadie for instruction.

After all, that's why he was here.

So she waved him toward her.

Her own desires might tell her that it was best to direct him to take care of her, but she understood that he wasn't there yet. He wouldn't be able to handle it just now. And pushing him too far?

She didn't want him to embarrass himself. Because even if it didn't bother her, it would bother him if he were to lose control before the show had even begun.

She'd prepared enough, lazily paying attention to herself while she'd watched him, that when he she gestured for him to come to her, she pulled him down onto the bed and let him crawl over her. She brought her lips back to his, kissing him again, but the hunger from downstairs had returned.

He knew what he was doing—or rather he knew what he wanted to do. So Sadie simply told him to "go ahead" and she handed herself over to him, already preparing herself for what she knew was coming.

Being given permission, and not knowing what to do with it, Beau seemed to take a moment to run through every bit of understanding he had about what was supposed to happen. For barely a registerable moment he paid attention to her breasts and then he moved to what interested him more, pushing himself into her entirely in one thrust, making her happy that she'd put the effort into things that she had ahead of time, and then he froze.

She bit her lip, watching his face, her hands hooked gently around his neck—she hoped for him that wasn't as far as they were getting, but she didn't have much hope there would be more to it. He was so excited by the prospect that the act meant relatively little.

But he seemed to gain a second wind and Sadie simply held on through his search for what he needed. Less enthusiasm—less hurry—and it wouldn't be so bad. Beau was the kind of man that could be molded into being a gentle and attentive lover. And, even if she didn't intend to reap the rewards, she could lay the groundwork for him. She understood, though, that first there was simply the getting this out of the way—getting the urgency out of the way.

And when he was done, she did her best to comfort him. She kissed him, ran her hands over his body, and assured him that he was fine. She was fine. He was fine. Everything was just as it should be. Because, really, it was.

She asked him for the rag when his breathing evened out a little and brought it to her, immediately offering to clean things up when he realized what she was doing—and she let him. Because it was his first act toward being the kind of lover that she knew that he would want to be.

"Now," she said, when all was clean and calm and he'd returned the rag—taking his chances that he was still allowed access to her body by fondling her breasts. "I want you to do something for me. OK? Beau? Just for me?"

"Of course," he said, diving in to kiss her again. "Of course. I'll what you want me to do."

Sadie smiled at him.

"Anything?" She asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

A determined nod.

"Anything," he assured her, his brows furrowed.

She rearranged herself, laying herself open to him. He looked less afraid than before, much more curious. It was the expression he wore whenever anyone was teaching him something new. It was the eagerness to learn—the eagerness to be the best at anything he tried to pick up—and it would take him far in all walks of life.

Sadie felt her cheeks burn hot as she explained to him what she wanted him to do. She explained to him the parts of herself that were the most pleasurable to her if he wanted her to experience the same kind of happiness that he had. She found it interesting that several boyfriends, one husband, five kids later—and experiences she wanted even to forget since the world had gone to hell—and suddenly she felt embarrassed explaining it to him.

Innocence returned in the presence of innocence retained.

But he listened carefully and approached, when he deemed that he wanted to do this, the act with the same ferocious enthusiasm as he had approached everything before, but this time it was different. This time it was enthusiasm for her—for what she might get out of it—and she closed her eyes allowing her brain to swim entirely with the sensations.

She didn't have to lie to him with her praise either. It came easily enough after she'd regained her senses.

And he beamed at her, as proud of the fact that he'd made her react that way as he'd been of anything he'd accomplished in life so far. And it was all the more endearing.

With the ability and the enthusiasm of a typical twenty something, it wasn't long before was searching out the chance to "try again" at things done before. The second round, forcibly slower and more controlled through Sadie's physical and verbal demands, went much more smoothly than the first for her at least—though he seemed to get the same level of pleasure from everything.

And when they were done, and she was hoping that she'd exhausted at least some small piece of the energy reserve that he had after a full day's work, Sadie convinced him to lie beside her quietly, for just a moment. She allowed him to fondle her breasts and to touch her face and she joined him in the gentle exploration of their bodies—allowing him to feel the same gentle touch of admiration in the afterglow.

Finally, though, she kissed him and she rolled her body, sitting up and somewhat looming over him. She was careful to keep a smile on her face so that her tone, the message she had to deliver, arrived to him as something pleasant…not as something painful.

"Thank you," she said.

He smiled.

"Thank you," he responded.

"You are a very—very good lover," Sadie declared.

He said something—his lips moved—she watched them dance but she missed it. She smiled, at any rate, because his facial expression said it was just a return of the compliment.

"Remember," Sadie said, holding her finger up to catch his attention and stop him from speaking until she was done. "You should enjoy yourself. But—you should make sure that she does too. You're not alone."

He furrowed his brow.

"I know what you like. I know it now," he assured her.

She shook her head at him.

"No," she said. "Not me. I love you, Beau. But—I'm old."

She made a face to try to illustrate her point and his eyes lit up in humor at it.

"I'm so old—I won't live long like you," Sadie declared. "But—you will choose a beautiful woman your age. So much prettier than me. And you'll be happy with her forever. And—you know now…how to make her very happy."

She wagged her eyebrows at him and touched her hand to his chest.

"You know she'll be very, very impressed—just take your time and pay attention," Sadie said. "It's not a race."

His face screwed up slightly and Sadie watched his Adam's apple bobbing again. He shook his head at her.

"I don't want…" he said.

But she closed her eyes, deliberately, to not see the last of his statement. And she knew that he saw it. He knew, he'd talked to her enough, what it meant when she closed her eyes or she turned her back on someone. She wasn't going to accept what they had to say.

Sadie opened her eyes again and she could see it on his face that he understood that. She shook her head slightly at him and forced herself to smile again, not wanting him to know that her heart was breaking simply for letting him down—because she believed that she was doing what was best. She believed she was doing what would make him the happiest for the longest possible amount of time in this world.

"You will always have me," Sadie said. "I will love you. And you will always be very, very special to me, Beau."

He tried to interrupt her, but she shook her head, not allowing him.

"But you will find someone that you will love more," she said. "And I'll be happy for you. And you'll be happy for me. Because that's what we do for people that we love."

"Can we…do this?" Beau asked.

Sadie shook her head.

"I don't think so," she said. She raised her eyebrows at him and the smile came a little easier this time. "You're going to be too busy. And your new girlfriends might not like it. OK?"

He smiled then, the first smile he'd given in a bit, at the thought of having one of these new girlfriends that she spoke of—one that she hoped he had very soon who might be much to his liking.

"But we're still friends?" Beau asked.

Finally her smile could be genuine. Sadie nodded her head.

"Forever," she promised him. He accepted the promise with a smile. "I'm hungry," she said. "Do you want to go with me? See if it's time to eat? Maybe—you could talk to someone?"

He smiled, gnawed his lip, and then nodded before he sat up like he would leave the bed with her. Sadie started to move around to slide off the bed and go in search of clean clothes, but he reached and wrapped his hand around her arm, drawing back her attention.

"Can I kiss you?" Beau asked. "I know not for good and know—not no more times—but just one more time?"

Sadie swallowed and considered the request for a moment before she nodded and closed her eyes, accepting the kiss that he moved to give her.

And when they left the house, arm and arm like he enjoyed walking with her when he escorted places—especially when the dusk began to play with her eyes—Sadie thought that he walked with his back a little straighter and his head a little higher.

She could hope great things came from him out of the afternoon—but if nothing else, it was a nice afternoon for them both and Beau, as handsome of a young man as he was, wore his confidence well.


	3. Northern Stars - Daryl and Carol

**AN: So the request was made for something of a "change" in Northern Stars. However, the change proposed would pretty much require simply rewriting the story instead of changing a scene/adding a scene/or giving more information. **

**So, I've reached a compromise. **

**This could be considered, however you want to think of it, as either an alternate ending to Northern Stars or even an epilogue of sorts. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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"What are you doing?!" Daryl barked at Melodye. "Make it stop."

She laughed at him. Her laughter wasn't what he was trying for. What he wanted was the sad and pathetic—and very loud—howling to come to an end.

He leaned over her, watching her, doing his "job," of being close by until she asked him for something, while she gently washed off the fresh, red-skinned baby boy that had been in the world no more than an hour.

And Daryl was anxious to get his hands back on baby—he'd only had him for a moment—just long enough to check him over and double count fingers and toes for Carol who kept asking him, essentially, if he was sure that he could count all the way to ten.

He'd named him Callum and Cayden hadn't even met him yet. He was so new that really nobody had met him yet. Alice had the most time with him—since when he was born he didn't seem too anxious to draw his first breaths, but now he wasn't anxious to stop sucking them in and showing everyone that the lungs she'd worried over were working just fine.

"Get me the towel, Daryl," Melodye said.

He offered her the so-called "towel" that she asked for, though it was actually a blanket being used as a towel so that it wouldn't scratch the baby's skin at all. He watched as she quickly wrapped the tiny thing up in the towel, hushing his cries a little, and patted it to soak the water up that way rather than scrubbing it off.

"Well?" She asked, offering the baby out to him like a prize.

"What'cha want me to do?" Daryl asked, not sure if this ritual was actually done yet or not. It was similar to what had happened when she'd pulled him—what seemed like forever and a day ago—to the washroom of the prison to clean Cayden up, but he couldn't remember all the steps that were involved.

"For now? Take him to Mama," Melodye said. "Get him a meal. I'll get his diaper and clothes and bring it to her. She'll want to dress him first."

The crying had slowed some, but it hadn't come to a complete stop. Daryl accepted the almost weightless bundle and hugged the boy to his chest, and Callum let out another pathetic round of the wails so that Daryl bounced him gently to calm them.

"There's no sense in that," he said softly to the baby. "You don't got no manners already. Someone gives you a good bath—cleans you up all nice and shiny so everyone can look at you—and you just scream at 'em."

Talking seemed to calm the baby because, though he kept scrunching his face up like he might launch into crying again, he didn't actually do it. He was considering it, but he wasn't dedicated to it.

Daryl smiled at the red-faced, angry, wrinkled boy.

They'd given it up. There wouldn't be any more for them. Cayden was their one and only—the last one? The one that had never come to be anything more than something they vaguely knew about? They'd taken it to be proof that there were simply no more babies to be born to them.

And, sadly enough, even when Carol had discovered that she was expecting Callum they'd almost written him off. He was something they would have, temporarily, but they would probably never know him. She'd hold him, for just a little while, in a place tucked deep inside her where they'd only know he was there—they'd only feel he was there.

But then? She'd held him a little longer than they expected…and a little longer…and then, finally, in the still dark hours of the morning she'd woken Daryl to say that she was done holding him.

It was time for someone else to have a go at it.

Even then, Daryl hadn't really believed that it would be real. So when there had been those few moments—Carol's concern and the sound of her voice burned into his mind alongside the vision of Alice trying to make the baby breathe—of doubt? Daryl had started to make himself understand, once more, that they weren't right to ask for this again. They weren't right to be greedy when they had Cayden already.

Yet now, here he was, holding the bundle in his arms and he couldn't only barely remember why they were concerned about the baby in the first place. He looked perfect.

And as his little eyelids sagged a little, Callum wriggled ever so slightly in Daryl's arms and raised his alarms once more, prompting Daryl to make the trip into the bedroom where he found Michonne tucking blankets and sheets around Carol who was propped against pillows in the bed. Everything in there, it looked, had already been changed in his absence.

"Al?" Daryl asked Michonne as he crossed the floor toward the bed.

"Gone to get some things from the clinic," Michonne said. "Something to help Carol out a bit. She said she'll bring Cayden."

Daryl hummed at her and stopped his steps for a moment when she reached a hand out and caught him. He gave her a second to admire the baby that he carried in his arms, since everyone in the community seemed to regard the baby as "theirs" in some way, and he smiled in Carol's direction.

Her face said clearly that she was tired, exhausted even, and that she wasn't entirely free of pain as of yet. It wore on her face, around her eyes. But there was something else there as well—and it was a happiness that looked beautiful on her. She would allow them all to admire Callum, to appreciate "her work" in having made the baby boy, but she was also anxious to have him in her arms for more than the few moments that she'd spent with him right after he'd let out his first cries.

"He's just beautiful," Michonne declared, smiling at Daryl and then passing the comment to Carol as well. Daryl wasn't sure how to respond to it, because it seemed like such an obvious statement, but Carol thanked Michonne for it. "I'll tell Alice to hurry up," Michonne said, before she turned and squeezed Carol's hand before slipping out of the room.

Callum whined again, wriggling slightly once more in his blanket, and Carol reached her arms out silently requesting the baby for inspection and feeding. Daryl passed him over, somewhat reluctantly, and sat on the edge of the bed beside her while she unwrapped the baby and took a quick moment to survey his body.

"He's got all his parts," Daryl said.

Carol smiled.

"Just making sure," she said.

"I checked twice," Daryl said. "Mel checked. Then I was checkin' again while she was checkin' to make sure nothin' fell off. Trust me. Every one of 'em…they there."

Carol hummed.

"But I'll still check to be sure," she said, her voice carrying the fatigue that showed on her face.

Daryl moved his hand and rubbed the lump that, under the cover, he knew to be her leg.

"What about you?" He asked.

She was already making cooing noises at the baby and focusing on getting him to accept a breast that he wasn't entirely sure was something he wanted yet. She didn't hear Daryl. She had more important things—more urgent things—to worry about than herself at the moment.

He squeezed the leg his hand rested on gently, rubbed his hand over it, and squeezed again. The methodical repetition of such a touch was soothing to him, though he didn't think until afterwards if it really did anything for her or not.

"What about you?" He asked, when he heard her satisfied sigh and could tell that she'd finally introduced their newest addition to the joys of nourishment.

"What?" She asked.

Daryl chuckled.

"Are. You. OK?" He asked, stressing out every word.

She smiled, despite the tired look in her eyes.

"I'm wonderful," she said. And Daryl had to believe it because she said it with absolute sincerity.

"You done good," Daryl said. "Thank ya," he offered.

He felt strange thanking her for Callum—he thanked her regularly for Cayden too. He didn't know if it was common practice or not, since he really never heard anyone else thank their wives for their children—but then he didn't presume to know what they did in private. Still he felt compelled to do it. He felt like it was right. He needed to thank her.

Because he thanked her for all of it. He thanked her for the carrying them—the struggles that he saw her go through as she asked her body to accommodate this growing child. He thanked her for delivering them—something he had to admit that, if they asked him to do it, he wasn't sure whether or not they'd have any children. But he also thanked her simply for what she made his life.

In her own simple way, she made his life everything he could ever want it to be. She made it everything he'd ever wanted and everything he'd never even dreamed he might want, all at once.

So he thanked her, and he thanked her often. He didn't often have other words for her—because poetry wasn't something he found he was very good at since he'd attempted the one romantical poem for her and she'd laughed at him for rhyming love with dove three different times, none of which made sense, because he couldn't find another word that sounded the same—but he did thank her.

"Thank you," she echoed back.

She puckered at him so that he slid gently down the side of the bed and leaned over her and the baby enough to softly bring their lips together, wanting to be mindful not to squish their son.

"Hey! Stop it right now!" Alice commanded, coming in the bedroom unannounced as though she owned the place. "Tell them, Cayden. Say stop it right now!"

"You 'top it now!" Cayden boomed out.

Daryl laughed to himself and glanced to see her carrying the boy on her hip, a bag slung over one shoulder.

"That's how we got these two in the first place," Alice said, muttering to herself as much as talking to them. "And we don't need another one right now. You're off duty for at least six weeks. So you can just—"

But she didn't finish. She couldn't keep a straight face over her pretended annoyance at bursting in on a kiss and she didn't seem to be able to get through her fake speech about how kissing lead to all the evils of the world.

"We let you deliver our kids an' you don't even got a damn clue where babies come from," Daryl responded back, shaking his head.

"I know how they get out," Alice commented. "That's about all I need to know."

She deposited Cayden's feet on the floor and he came running at Daryl so Daryl picked him up. He squealed in delight and Daryl shushed him.

"Not quite so loud, OK? We want'cha lil' brother to be used to the noise, but we don't wanna scare him to death right off, OK?" Daryl said.

Cayden was wide eyed and excited. His open mouthed, toothy grin, ran all the way across his face in delight that his long awaited brother was finally here. Daryl couldn't recall when he'd seen him so happy. And he couldn't help but laugh to himself to think that he'd remind of this initial happiness in the years to come when he bickered and complained because Callum took some toy or another or wanted something that he had.

Alice walked around Daryl a moment and offered Carol some pills and a bottle of water that she'd pulled out of the bag she was carrying. Carol took them and swallowed them immediately without question or complaint.

"I'm going to leave you guys alone for a bit," Alice said. "But when you're done and he's done? Just—come get me? No rush and nothing urgent. Just want to check back over things. OK?"

Carol gave her a nod and a thanks and Alice quickly brushed a fingertip over the baby's cheek before she tousled Cayden's hair and twisted Daryl's ear on her way back around them to escape the room.

Daryl leaned Cayden close enough that he could see the baby that was caught in the difficult land that every child must face between food and sleep.

"Well," Daryl said. "What'cha think a' Callum? Your lil' brother?"

Cayden stared at him, stretched out a hand, and Carol caught his hand and guided it to the baby's face so that he could gently stroke the soft skin there. As soon as he did, though, Cayden snatched his hand back and looked at Daryl, wide eyed, like he hadn't expected the baby to be an actual material human being.

"Him's so big!" Cayden declared.

Daryl bit his lip.

"Yeah?" He asked. "In comparison to what?"

Cayden looked at Carol.

"What's he bigger than?" Carol asked, restructuring Daryl's question.

"A squirrel!" Cayden declared.

"He's bigger'n a squirrel, you right," Daryl said.

"A bunny!" Cayden said.

"Bigger'n some bunnies," Daryl said.

Cayden looked at him, his nose scrunching slightly like Carol's did when she amused herself with some thought that she found at least a little "at risk" of not being as hilarious to everyone else as it was to her.

"A piggy…" Cayden declared, but with less enthusiasm because he dissolved into laughter at his own joke.

"Now you're just being silly," Daryl said.

Cayden laughed at his joke a moment longer, squished Daryl's face between his hands to further amuse himself, and then he watched a moment as the baby that Carol had just finished burping started to doze a little in her arms.

"I'll get you a diaper'n clothes," Daryl said. "Mel was s'posed to bring 'em."

Carol smiled at him.

"They're just trying to give us a little time," she said. "But—I think you're right. He'll need something soon. Something really soft?"

Daryl nodded.

"Mama…" Cayden declared, stretching his arms out toward Carol. He was suddenly deciding that he'd had enough of Daryl, and maybe that he'd had enough of this strange new baby having _his _mother's attention.

Daryl stood up, determined to go and get what Carol needed, and lifted Cayden over her, depositing him on the bed on the other side of her so that there was no risk he'd fall off.

"You lay down there," Daryl said. "Be still like. Quiet like you huntin' deers."

Cayden's eyes went wide and he put his finger up to his mouth and blew at it. Daryl nodded and repeaeted the "hushing" gesture.

"Snuggle in with me?" Carol said to Cayden. "We'll take a little nap with Callum?"

Cayden didn't need more prompting to snuggle right in next to his mother.

"I'm gonna get that stuff," Daryl said, leaning quickly to capture Carol's lips once more.

"You don't mind?" She asked.

Daryl chuckled to himself. Like after all she'd done he'd mind going to get a few things for the baby. He shook his head and looked over the sight of them—Carol with Callum new to the world and sleeping already in her arms. Cayden snuggled in next to her, his finger in his mouth, watching Daryl with big blue eyes whose eyelids sagged a little just at the mention of a nap.

"Nah," Daryl said. "I got it too good to mind somethin' little."

Carol puckered at him again, just a quick air kiss sent in his direction, and he headed out of the room to see what was taking Melodye and if she'd gathered things together for him at least.

But even if she hadn't, he meant what he said. He used to get fussed—many more times than he cared to admit—over little annoyances in his life. But now? He knew he had it too good for such foolishness, and he hoped he always remembered that. 

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**AN: As always, if you have any requests or anything you'd like to see, drop me a private message and I'll see what I can do about filling your request! I hope you enjoyed! **


	4. Love Child - Daryl and Sophia

**AN: Hanna wanted something where Daryl and Sophia talked about the impending arrival of June. I'm not sure if this is what she had in mind, but this is what happened.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Daryl pulled his hand out of his glove, leaving the glove tucked in the space he created between his arm and his side, and shook it.

Over the years one thing was for sure. Sophia could throw a ball as well as anybody ever could. She'd leave his hand stinging, even through the glove, more often than he might have liked to admit. And she could catch too. Every now and again, just to test her, he'd thrown back with more force than he really thought was acceptable—giving her as good as she gave—and she never complained.

Every Sunday they did the same thing. Each Sunday looked exactly like the one before. After church, they had lunch. After lunch, Daryl and Sophia took to the yard and they threw the ball back and forth.

There were often things that needed to be done. There was work around the house that Daryl always had to get done on the weekends because there was no other time to do it. It didn't matter, though, what had to be done. It was always put aside until they'd thrown the ball back and forth—ball and gloves alike worn by time and use at this point—for at least an hour.

Sometimes they talked, other times they didn't, but that one thing remained constant.

Sophia was already packing up her stuff, though. Soon she'd be going to college. Every time Daryl even thought of it, he very nearly choked himself with the knot that inexplicably rose up in his throat.

She would drive herself. She'd likely be the only young lady there that would drive herself to college. There'd certainly been a good deal of confusion when they'd requested parking for her in one of the garages. They'd tried to issue her some sort of temporary parking, assuming that they were confused about where she'd be leaving her car while Daryl, without a doubt, unloaded her things for her, but they'd finally gotten it straightened out that she'd be driving herself.

She'd drive herself, in her own car that Alice and Melodye had chipped in to help Daryl and Carol buy for her, so that she could come and go as she pleased.

Sophia was independent. They'd made sure of that. If nothing else, she was independent.

But she was a lot of other things as well.

Still, Daryl and Carol both had wanted her to know that she always had them. No matter what, they would always be there for her—but they wanted her to know that she had herself too. She never needed to feel that she couldn't be herself, and that she couldn't go her own way, just because she might have to go it alone.

Watching her go out that door, though? Even if she promised to only be gone for the week and come back for the weekend—as she insisted she'd do and maybe would for the first little while—was going to be hard.

And it was going to be hard, too, because Daryl knew that once she was out there—once she got a taste of what it felt like to be free and to be Sophia when there was no one around watching her—she was going to love it. The first Sunday without pitching the ball back and forth was going to be the longest Sunday ever. He already knew that.

Today they might have talked about her leaving—again. Today they might have covered, once more, the checklists that Daryl had made for her and repeated to her every week for two months. But that wasn't what Daryl had in mind.

So, glove in hand, he waved her over. She came, wide smile on her face, eyes glittering.

"Too much for you?" She teased.

Daryl chuckled and nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "Always too much."

He gestured toward the porch and she instinctively went over to sit down. It was "time out". It was time to sit a moment, enjoy the sun—or the rain of that were the case because not even the weather kept them from their Sunday ballgame—and it was time for Daryl to smoke a cigarette that he'd later drop in the ashtray Carol conveniently placed there for him to keep the area clean while, more often than not, Sophia entertained him with some piece of her life.

Except today it was Daryl who wanted to talk.

"Sit, Soph," Daryl said.

She did, though she did cock an eyebrow at him for commanding her, accidentally, a little more like a dog than his daughter. He smirked at her in response because it was all that he had to answer for the slip.

"We're going to pick her up," he said. "Tomorrow."

Sophia hummed and watched him, her elbows on her knees, as he lit a cigarette. There was no need to clarify what he was talking about. She knew it perfectly well. It was the only thing, besides her impending departure, that the house was filled with.

"How you feel about it?" Daryl asked.

Sophia shrugged.

"Same way I felt about it the last time you asked me," she responded. "Honestly, Daddy, I'm not nearly as inclined to change my mind as Merle might have you believe."

Daryl chuckled to himself.

Though he might believe that it was important this daughter be independent and his wife be more than allowed to speak her mind around his home—her opinion on very nearly everything sought out by him before he made a concrete decision—his brother wasn't quite of the same mind. Merle believed, though Andrea was the only woman with which he spent any substantial amount of time and she never seemed as guilty of the sins he put on her as he said she was—that women shouldn't be asked anything because they never knew for sure what they felt or thought.

Thursday's conviction was Friday's doubt and Saturday's denial. That was Merle's motto.

"I know you didn't change your mind," Daryl said. "But—Soph—I just want to be sure you've thought it all out. I mean…you know your Ma and me, we love you. We always will. But—it's a big thing bringing another kid into the house. And this one? She ain't but four years old. It's going to be a lot of work on your Ma. We're gonna be busy with her…"

"You think I'm going to be jealous?" Sophia asked, raising her eyebrow at him in question.

Daryl chewed at his lip and took a drag off his cigarette to keep from having to respond. He wasn't entirely sure what he thought. To be honest, Merle was probably entirely backwards in his thinking because Daryl often felt it was Sophia and Carol that were the most set in what they believed to be true. Daryl was the one that felt, more often than not, that he could swing back and forth if given the chance.

Honestly? He appreciated having Carol tell him, quite often, which way he should go on one thing or another.

"She's gonna be around a lot longer before she leaves and goes off to school," Daryl said. "We're gonna have a lot more time with her than we've had with you, Soph. I just—I don't want you to think that means we love her any more or you any less. Ya know? 'Cause it ain't the case. I don't think…"

He paused and shook his head at her.

"I don't think that I could love nobody more'n I do you," Daryl said. "And I know your Ma couldn't."

Sophia offered him a soft smile.

"Daddy—it's not about loving more," Sophia said. "It's just about loving—_one_ more. Or two more, even. If you want to. If you can."

"If we coulda," Daryl started. He never got to finish, though, because Sophia cut him off. She didn't want him to finish. He knew she didn't want him to finish because, as far as he could recall, he'd only ever expressed the sentiment that she knew was coming once in its entirety. After the one time, she'd cut him off every time he'd started.

"You and Mama would've raised me from the time I was born," Sophia said. "And I know that. Sometimes—when I'm alone and I can't sleep? Sometimes I like to think what it'd been like. I like to think how we'd have been back then. When I was little?"

Daryl swallowed at the lump in his throat.

"You ain't the only one," he said.

And she wasn't. Sometimes, when they were alone, Daryl and Carol liked to share "stories" with each other. They were more or less fantasies, fairy tales they told each other, of what it would have been like if Sophia had been with them all along. They talked about who would have fed her at what hours of the night. They talked about first bikes and pony rides and trips to the coast to watch her tiny little toddler feet make their first prints in the sand.

They were all fantasies and no more real than any movie made, but they were important to them. It was the only way, sometimes, that they could get over the disappointment that they felt of not having had that time with her. It was time lost. It was the most precious thing in the world and it was something that they'd never get back.

Her childhood, spent lonely and alone in an orphanage not thirteen miles away from them, was the greatest injustice that Daryl felt he could ever do to anyone in his life—and he often felt responsible for it.

"She's four years old," he said. "If I'da known…you woulda been that age, Soph."

Sophia had finally come out and said it on her last birthday. They'd noticed, as they always did on her birthday celebrations, that there was a sadness that seemed to wrap around the girl when she blew out her candle. It was the kind of sadness, on her face, that they both felt when they talked about how all those years with her were gone, never to be seen again.

And finally they'd asked her what it was that caused the sadness. They'd asked her what they could do—if there was anything that could be done—to help with taking it away.

And her answer had surprised them more than anything ever could. Because both of them, honestly, had expected her to express some profound feeling of loss for those very same years they mourned. They'd expected it to be something they'd all mourn together but never be able to fix. They'd thought it would be something very personal to her.

And it was personal, but not just to her.

She told them that she was sad because, every time she blew out the candle, she hoped for them that they would have a child. She wanted it _for them_. She wanted, oddly enough, not to mourn the time that she didn't spend with them in her own childhood, but rather to see someone else get to spend their whole lives between them as their parents.

Right away, they'd let that be the answer that they needed to their own questions about what, if anything, they'd do to grow their family. And since, for whatever reason, God hadn't seen fit to bless them with a child of their own, they'd put in the paperwork to bring home another from the very same home they'd found Sophia in.

Now their request had been granted. She was four years old. Her name was June and she'd be coming to join them just in time to see Sophia off to school.

But the age of the young girl just served to remind Daryl that, if he'd really looked into things the way he should have when he'd met Carol, he might have brought Sophia home when she was only four.

"That's why we've gotta go and get her," Sophia said. "She's four now. We don't want her waiting another few years. It's better to bring her home now."

Daryl chuckled.

"She's not ours yet," he said. "We don't gotta go get her."

Sophia hummed.

"She's _ours_," Sophia said. "She's just waiting."

Daryl shook his head.

"You're somethin' else," he commented.

Sophia smiled, wagging her eyebrows at him.

"Like Mama?" She asked.

Daryl smiled then. Sophia always loved it when he compared her to Carol. The two, even if they'd spent so much of Sophia's life apart, were cut from the same cloth. In that case there was much, in his opinion, to be said for biology, even if otherwise they'd determined that it didn't matter one little bit.

"Just like her," Daryl said.

Sophia stood up from her position on the porch and slipped her hand back into her glove.

"You think June will like the glove I got her?" Sophia asked.

"Yeah," Daryl said. "I do."

"You'll teach her to catch, right?" Sophia asked. "Play on Sundays?"

Daryl nodded at her, knowing full well what she was doing.

"What about you?" He asked.

She smiled at him.

"I can already catch," she said. "Throw too."

"What about Sundays?" Daryl asked.

"I can catch then too," Sophia said, raising her eyebrows at him. "My Daddy taught me. Come on—let's go another round. Unless you're too tired?"

"Never for you, Soph," Daryl said, getting to his feet to trail after her to the places in the yard where, as Carol pointed out, the grass didn't grow for being worn down so often by the same pairs of shoes.


	5. All The King's Horses - Daryl and Carol

**AN: So this was in response to a request from someone who wanted a "check in" at a later time to see Daryl with the larger family of All the King's Horses. I hope this doesn't disappoint.**

**If you have any requests, from any stories that I've done, for "missing," "redone," or "future" scenes, please don't hesitate to let me know. I'll write them down and then, hopefully, I'll be able to come up with something that you'd like to see. Almost all characters welcome (I'll let you know if I don't think it's something I can do). **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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The one thing that Daryl never tired of hearing was some stranger making the comment "don't they know what's causing that".

That was a lie. He tired of it very easily. He found it to be one of the most annoying things in the world. But if he let them know that it got to him, then he really just felt like he'd failed somehow. Instead, he usually found some way to make a joke about.

What he could never understand, though, was people's need to worry so damn much about what he and his family were doing. He was happily married to a woman that, honestly, he couldn't always believe was real. Even on the days when the best thing they could do for their relationship was get away from each other a few hours, he still wouldn't have changed a single thing about his life. Together? They had three pretty amazing kids and they were counting down the time until they welcomed home number four.

So while Daryl could understand that four kids, all of them under the age of eight, might seem a little overwhelming to some people, and could certainly seem like something they didn't think was a great idea for their lives, what he couldn't understand was why it mattered to them that he and Carol thought it was wonderful. After all, the strangers weren't the ones that were launching into life with a newborn before Aubrey was entirely potty trained. They weren't the ones that had to monitor sugar intake or face the music that they were going to be up all night. They weren't the ones that were crunching numbers and cutting corners because they wanted a bigger house that gave their children more room to spread out and have their own space.

Really, Daryl couldn't see how it was anyone else's concern at all. But everyone seemed to think it was something that they should somehow make a statement about, and most of them never missed an opportunity to pass some kind of judgment on them without knowing, even for a moment, the chain of events that had led them both to this place in their life together.

Aubrey rode happily in the grocery cart. In her hands, she held the small red box of animal crackers that she wasn't allowed to open until she got to the car. The crackers—which were really cookies—were her favorite treat and she only got them for behaving in stores. One box each trip. She could hold them, the sweet promise of reward for good behavior, and she could admire them and name the animals printed on the box as she rode, but she couldn't open them.

Sophia walked beside the cart, her fingers threaded into the metal of the large basket, and Russ usually walked up ahead a bit or sometimes rode standing on the end of the cart. Daryl knew, of course, that the riding was frowned upon by many parents—he'd heard that as well—but he honestly couldn't care less. He was willing to wager that he could take three kids grocery shopping, buy enough food for his whole family to eat in a week, and get out of there before even one of the judgmental smart asses could finish with their "solo" shopping experience.

"I want that!" Sophia declared.

Daryl slowed the cart to find what she was looking at. She walked over and pointed to a package of cookies.

"You get one thing," Daryl said. "So you want that or you want them fruit things you got on the last aisle?"

Sophia walked back and peered into the cart to try to find what he was referencing. Her four year old memory couldn't recall treats too long. It was part of the reason that, her shirt still stained with evidence to the contrary, she would insist that she never got any treats. Daryl reached in the cart, fished out the fruit things that she'd picked out, and offered them to her to measure up against the cookies.

"This is fruit," Sophia said. "This is cookies."

She looked at Daryl like this was the most reasonable thing ever said by a human being.

"And you picking one of 'em," Daryl responded.

She drew in a deep breath and let out an overly dramatic huff. She shook her head at him.

"One of them is healthy food," she said. "The other is a good treat for me."

"That ain't real fruit," Daryl said. "It's sugar pretending to be fruit. The real fruit's in here. Now which one you want?"

Russ, having skipped on ahead to the end of the aisle, came skipping back to find out what was going on. The choice of treats was a common occurrence, though, so it didn't take him more than a fraction of a minute to figure out that Sophia was stuck in the ever-repeating conundrum of trying to decide which one of her desires she would sacrifice.

"I know what I'm getting," Russ informed them.

"You're gettin' them cakes," Daryl said.

Russ nodded.

"Yep," he said. "And that's all that I need because too much of 'em rots your teeth and then you gotta get a shot in your mouth."

Sophia, at just the thought of it, dropped the cookies on the floor. Daryl instructed her to pick them up, hoping to distract away from the horror of what Russ had learned when he'd asked a few too many questions to a grumpy Merle after a cavity filling, but it was too late.

"Noooo!" Sophia screeched, the words growing ever more slurred as she moved through them. "No Daddy! I don't want that! Nooo! Daddy! I don't want a shot in my mo-outh..."

Daryl glanced around even as he stepped toward Sophia to try to quieten her down. He scooped her up, bent over with her held against his body, and retrieved the lost cookies. Then, for good measure, he reached over and swatted Russ on the rear end before the boy could see it coming.

"It's true!" Russ protested immediately, acting as though the swat had done more damage than it had. Sophia, now inconsolable at the thought of this new form of torture thought up just for her suffering, was repeatedly informing Daryl—while apparently choking on her own spit—that she was entirely against this practice and it was nothing that she wanted in life.

"Soph—calm down!" Daryl demanded. "You don't got cavities and you brush your teeth when you're supposed to, right?"

"Uncle Merle don't brush his teeth?" Russ asked. 

"Russell," Daryl said, the only warning that he needed in the moment. Russ backed up and walked around the cart to put it between them.

"Soph—you don't have cavities," Daryl repeated. "OK? You do need a nap but..."

He shouldn't have said that. Because suddenly her problem changed from being that she didn't want cavities and shots in her mouth to the fact that she didn't want to go to sleep. Going to sleep was the second worst type of torture known to mankind.

Only slightly defeated, Daryl hoisted her up a little more onto his hip and shushed her while he put both the fruit treats and the cookies into the cart. There were battles to be fought, but this one wasn't going to be one of them. He was tired, they were tired, and he wanted to go home. With any luck, Sophia would be half asleep by the time they checked out and she'd go out the rest of the way on the ride home so that he'd only have to transfer her to her bed for a nap.

It took no more time for him to put the items into the cart than it took for Sophia to bury her face in his neck—the wetness there he decided to pretend was tears instead of probably a mix of snot and saliva—and to wrap her arms around his neck.

One handed, he pushed the cart to continue his trip down the aisle. It wasn't the most convenient way to grocery shop, but he prided himself on being flexible.

"Russ—go get two cans of the corn," Daryl said when the vegetables were in sight. Russ did as he was told and stood waiting for Daryl to give him more orders. "Green beans. No—not them. The ones that says cut. That one. One over. That one. And—the peas and carrots. Little green peas and carrots."

"Oh I don't like those," Russ protested.

"I don't care what'cha like," Daryl said. "Put the can in the buggy. It ain't gonna hurt you to eat peas."

"You don't know that," Russ said. "What if they found out peas were bad for you? What if peas were bad for you and you and Mama make us eat peas all the time and then you find out that peas were like poison?"

"Peas ain't poison or we'da knowed it by now," Daryl said.

Despite his need to argue—hopefully meaning he had a promising career in law ahead of him—Russ put the cans mournfully into the cart.

"You'd feel really bad if they were," Russ insisted.

"Right now—not as bad as you'd think," Daryl said. The comment went over Russ's head, of course, because he had already moved on. At six he was every bit as easily distracted as he'd ever been. In fact, that was really the only thing that Carol had to report from talking to his first grade teacher. Russ was talkative and easily distracted. Carol had told Daryl that it was everything she could do to keep from laughing at the woman. This wasn't, after all, exactly a news flash.

Within ten minutes, Daryl had managed to roughly maneuver the cart through the store and get the last of the items that they needed. Every time he turned the cart, a task that was not at all easy with an armful of half-asleep Sophia, Aubrey laughed at him insisted that he do it "again". At least, of all of his offspring, one of them was having a genuinely good time.

So, by the time he made it to the cash register and had Russ helping him load the groceries onto the belt, he was in no mood to hear the words that he never tired of hearing. Still, he heard them just the same from the woman behind him. She waited, while he had Russ help him load the bags into the cart again, until he was almost ready to leave and then she offered the words as a parting gift from the shopping experience.

She chose the route of laughing somewhat ironically while she said them—like she thought it was going to be the most original and hilarious thing that she ever said—and she leaned over to share them with the person who had checked out Daryl's groceries.

"I guess they don't know what's causing that," she said, her voice low, but not quite low enough.

Daryl felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle and he looked at her. She glanced at him, but when she saw him looking at her, she looked genuinely shocked that he'd been able to hear her not-so-quiet words.

"We know," Daryl said. "But we're so damn good at it—we just can't seem to stop ourselves. But—you probably wouldn't know nothing about that."

And despite the fact that Daryl knew he'd have to spend the whole way to the car, and possibly the whole way home, talking his way out of explaining the comment to Russ, it was worth it to see the look of shock—and maybe a little offense—that came across the woman's face just before he bid her good day and wrestled his cart out of the store.

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By the time that Carol got home, Daryl had Sophia down for a short nap, Russ was playing in the backyard, and Aubrey was walking around eating animal crackers while she alternated between watching the cartoons that were on the television and "supervising" Daryl's attempts to get dinner ready to go.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm late!" Carol declared as she came in the door. She stopped only long enough to hang her purse on the coat hook there before she came straight toward the kitchen and straight toward Carol.

Aubrey immediately made a bee line for her and Carol scooped her up even as Aubrey reached her. She kissed her cheek and accepted the offering of a mushy and half-chewed animal cracker as a welcome home gift. Then she puckered her lips in Daryl's direction, already anticipating his greeting.

Daryl kissed her and then he kissed Aubrey at her quick command of "Da Da" and her offered pucker.

"I don't care you're late," Daryl said. "But I was gettin' kinda worried."

Carol made a face.

"They took forever," she said. "I was waiting for an hour. And then when I left I just wanted to get home and I knew that you'd fuss if I called while I was driving."

Daryl shook his head at her.

"Don't matter," he said. "You're OK, though?"

Carol smiled at him.

"Perfect," she said. Her voice sounded a little strange, and her face looked, perhaps, a little odd, but Daryl assumed it might have to do with the fact that she often got jittery on days when she had appointments. It would always take her a bit to come down entirely.

He nodded. Despite the fact that he had the guarantee from her that there was nothing to worry about, he still felt his stomach twisting up in knots. She was later than she was supposed to be and he'd been slowly working himself up. It was going to take longer than a few seconds to unwind from that entirely.

"They say anything?" He asked.

Carol raised her eyebrows at him.

"Well—I found out what we're having," she said.

Daryl swallowed.

"And?" He asked. He might have tried to read her face, but there was really no telling. He didn't know what he expected, or what she expected, so there really wasn't anything specific that he could look for in her expression.

She smiled.

"You want to know?" She asked. "Because you don't have to know if you don't want to. It could all be a big surprise to you—if you wanted."

Daryl chuckled to himself.

"You gonna make me beg?" He asked, taking Aubrey when she requested the changing of arms.

"Well..." Carol said, clearly drawing it out as long as she could. "I guess—I got my answer to something I've been wondering about for a long time."

Daryl furrowed his brows at her. He couldn't figure out what question Carol might have about any of this. After all, even though Russ wasn't her biological child, she'd still given birth to two already.

"What answer did you get?" Daryl asked.

Carol made a face.

"It was your side of the family," Carol said. "With Merle and Andrea? It was—your side of the family."

Daryl shook his head.

"Can I buy a damn vowel? Because I think I'm too tired to figure this out on my own," Daryl admitted.

"The Tweedles?" Carol said. "They say it runs in families. Apparently—it's a Dixon thing."

Daryl felt a flutter deep inside him that was unlike the feeling of the churning stomach that he'd had before. He must have made a face because Carol quickly took Aubrey out of his arms, put the little girl on the floor to trot back to her television show, and then declared to Daryl that he might want to sit down a minute. He could only shake his head at her—he was fine—because it took him a moment to find his tongue.

"You mean...?" He asked, not able to say it just yet.

"Two for the price of one," Carol said. "That's a bargain anywhere else."

Daryl grabbed her and pulled her to him. She hesitated a moment before she wrapped her arms around him.

"It's a bargain here," he said. "Just means—we got one more than we were planning on."

Carol laughed, the sound coming out more like a nervous burst of air than anything. Russ hadn't been planned. In some ways, Sophia hadn't exactly been planned. At least, she wasn't what she was planned to be. Aubrey had been a surprise to them. They'd gone into this baby—their last and Daryl had the appointment to prove it—intending it to be the first, and consequently the last, that they could say they planned entirely.

But the baby, or babies, seemed to already have a sense of humor.

Carol hugged him a moment longer and she accepted his kiss when they pulled apart. There were a few escaped tears on her face, proof that she must have thought he wouldn't react well, and Daryl rubbed them away with his fingertips before he dropped a hand to her belly and patted it.

"You're really not upset?" Carol asked, her voice making it clear that she still didn't entirely trust his reaction.

He laughed to himself.

"Hell, Carol. What the hell is there to be mad about? We both know what caused it," Daryl teased.


	6. Broken Mirrors - Sophia

**AN: So I've gotten a few requests for revisiting/adding scenes to Broken Mirrors. I'm accepting those for specific things you'd like to see (even if they conflict, since they are just scenes, it's not necessarily "the way things go") and I'll do them as I can. This is just one.**

**I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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The sun was just starting to set enough that the sky looked like it was bleeding. Sophia was late coming back from Union. She hadn't meant to get held up, but sometimes things just happened that way. She probably could've saved herself some time if she hadn't taken the long way around, forced to drive slower than she might want to because the old truck that was her favorite to drive didn't handle turns nearly as well as any of the new models, but she needed to take the long way back. She needed to slow to an almost stop, just for a moment, outside of the house.

There was nobody home. There was seldom anybody home.

The house looked the same as it always had. It was a little fresher. Whoever had bought it had freshened up the paint. They'd redone the outside. The yard was a little better tended. The porch had been re-stained. But it still looked the same.

Sophia didn't tell anyone that she drove by there every now and again. She didn't tell them that, coming home after she graduated, she stopped by there. She didn't tell them that she'd taken Eli, even when he had no idea what was going on, by there to show him the place where it had all began—where he'd first come to be something that changed their lives forever. She didn't tell them that sometimes she liked to simply stop on the curb and look at the house—look up at the window that had been the first she'd ever called hers.

She didn't tell them that sometimes, like greeting an old friend, she stopped to thank the house for having been a home. Her first.

She didn't tell them all of that because she knew that, in many ways, it had been a house of horrors for her mama. She knew that the changes that her mama had made since they'd left that house could have never come to pass inside those walls. And Sophia loved their new home too. She still stayed there, sometimes, when she felt she needed to. She packed an overnight bag, left her own small home, and went there. They never asked why when she showed up on the doorstep. They never asked why when she brought her bag inside. Her parents just welcomed her in as they always did and still told her goodnight before she retired to bed.

She loved her new home, but Sophia never forgot the old one.

She only slowed the truck a moment, on such an important day, to thank the house once again for having been what it was to her. Then she followed the all too familiar route to the shop and turned the truck down the gravel driveway to gun the engine as she sped up the small road to the shop. She might have paved the driveway years ago, but the gravel made a warm and welcoming sound that she just didn't want to part with.

Sophia parked the truck, got out, and pulled the bumper from the back that she'd gone to pick up. The part was incredibly hard to find and she'd been ecstatic to get it at the price that she'd paid. She wrestled it out of the truck and carried it toward the building they called the "parts house," a new addition to the place that was built when the two new stalls were added on, and she fumbled with the door there while balancing it. Inside, she rested it on the sheet she'd already laid out for it and gave it a once over to satisfy herself that she wasn't dreaming. It really was in almost pristine condition.

Then she stepped out of the building, locked it with a key, and strolled back toward the heavy side door that led into the main part of the shop. After all these years, the main part—the additions trailing off to the side—had never been changed. If she had her way, it never would be.

The stall doors were closed because the shop was closed. Wren would have left two hours ago. Merle would have slipped out an hour ago with most of the new employees that were on that day. Daryl would have left at least a half an hour ago. There were things to do and there was a party tonight. Everyone needed to get home to take showers. They wouldn't have waited around for Sophia to drag her slow ass all the way back from Union—even if they didn't know about her added stop.

Pushing with most of her weight against the heavy side door, Sophia stepped into the main part of the shop. She looked around and noted that the shop hands would have a good deal of cleaning to do when they got there in the morning. Matt and Jacob sometimes left before everyone was done, and when they did that, they came back to disaster. Wren and Merle especially, after all, had never picked up their toys. They couldn't be expected to do it now.

Sophia might have believed that she was alone in the empty shop, but then she heard the echoing thud of boots on the concrete floor. The sound carried through the quiet of the place. For all the sound that came from there in the day—the din of voices, a radio nobody listened to except for to sing badly to that one song, the sound of motors and paint guns and air hoses working equipment, the noise of metal clanging as it hit the ground or damage was hammered out as best it could be—the place was deathly silent when all that drew to a close.

When he came out of the office, his head down and his hair pulled back in the tight white pony tail he wore when he'd been working on something, he was looking at something in his hands. He wasn't looking at Sophia. He spoke to her without ever looking at her.

"This here package come in today. Addressed to both of us. Reckon it goes to you," he said.

He looked at her then and smiled. Sophia returned the smile and nodded. She swallowed.

"You open it," she said.

He chuckled.

"Can't," he said. "Wren already did. Ripped into the damn thing 'fore the mailman got his ass outta shouting range."

He held the small box out toward Sophia and she took it. It was plain and brown and she wasn't entirely sure what was in it until she lifted the lid off of it. Immediately, the hundreds of small cards, packed tightly in the box, told her what to expect. She smiled at them and took it over to the work bench so that she could wrestle a card out without dropping the rest to the floor. She looked it over, checking the pertinent information of the address and numbers, and then she offered it to Mac.

"Looks good, don't it?" She said, earning a smile from him. He pinched it between his fingers and studied it.

"Damn good," he said. "Except—Wendy—you really coulda changed the fuckin' name of this shit hole. Don't make no sense to keep callin' it Mac's. And you sure as shit didn't have to put my name on it."

Sophia took another card out of the box and looked at it. She'd had them printed up to hand out. The old ones had finally run out and they were really dated at any rate. Things needed to be updated to go with the changing face of the shop—they had to change with the times. The cards, now, proudly displayed her name as "Owner," but underneath her name they had Mac's name.

"It'll always be Mac's," Sophia said. "Always has been, always will be. You're the face of this place."

She laughed to herself.

"Besides—Wendy's is an eating place," she said.

"Right nice one, too," Mac mused.

Sophia chuckled.

Mac hummed and excused himself to go and pretend to toy with something on Wren's tool chest.

"You're the face of this place," Mac commented. "If it weren't for you? It'd gone under years ago. You know it too. You're the whole reason we got them new stalls. Got new blood. Got business coming from two counties in either direction—damn lot ain't never empty."

He looked at her.

"You did that Sophia," Mac said, surprising Sophia by using her name. Outside of business calls, it wasn't a sound she was used to hearing inside the shop. "It weren't me. I could barely keep the place afloat," Mac said. "Never made no good decisions about running the place. That what you done. Made all the good decisions."

Sophia smiled at him.

"You made some pretty good decisions," Sophia said. "You took a chance and hired a Wendy-bird for a shop hand. It didn't turn out so bad."

Mac chuckled.

"Best decision I ever made for this place," he said. "Maybe the best damn decision I ever made period."

Sophia didn't say anything for a moment. She could tell that there was nothing she needed to say. She watched as Mac made his way around the shop. He straightened something here and moved something there. He did a number of things that were really doing nothing at all, and then he turned in her direction, sighed, and leaned with his back against the workbench in a position that he was so accustomed to that Wren joked he'd worn a crevice into the wood that was just about as wide as his bony ass.

Mac dipped his hand into his pocket, jangled some spare change around for a moment, and then came out with a brass key on a keychain with a worn piece of leather on it. He looked at it a moment and then he straightened up and handed it to Sophia.

"Yours now," he said.

Sophia took the key from him and looked at the keychain. She'd never seen it before. At least, she'd never seen it close up. It had once been brown leather, no doubt, but it was worn soft and dark from age. She couldn't make out what it was, but it appeared to have some kind of logo stamped into the soft leather. She nodded at Mac.

"Thanks, Mac," Sophia said. "For—all of it?"

He reached and, as his only gesture for the moment, squeezed Sophia's shoulder near her neck. She resisted the urge to point out that his grip, even for his age, was stronger than he realized. She took the quick bite of discomfort for what it was—affection in the purest form.

"You're coming in tomorrow, right?" Sophia said.

Mac chuckled.

"Retired now," Mac said. "Don't need my old ass hanging around."

Sophia raised her eyebrows at him.

"That's what the hell all the retired people do—hang around," Sophia said. "Just that tomorrow? Nobody can bitch about the fact you aren't doing shit. You can rub it in their faces."

Mac chuckled.

"Just like old times, right?" He said with a wink.

"Always," Sophia responded.

Mac hummed and started toward the door. He stopped by the coat rack and gathered up the gray jacket that he carried in and out every day, even if Sophia had rarely ever seen him put it on.

"You're coming to the party, aren't you?" Sophia asked.

Mac hummed again and nodded.

"Ya Ma said somethin' about cake," Mac said. "And all the damn beer we can drink? Ain't passing that shit up. Besides—we got a lot to celebrate."

Sophia swallowed and smiled at him.

"Yeah," she said. "We do."

"You don't take too long," Mac said, making his way to the door and pulling it open. Sophia shook her head in response.

"Just checking things," she said. "Turning all the electricity off. I'll be on in a few minutes."

Mac nodded.

"See that you do," he said. "And—check the door. Fucking lock's been sticking something awful and Wren's worthless ass was supposed to oil it, but he ain't."

Sophia laughed to herself.

"I think I got it," she said.

"Yeah..." Mac mused. "I think you do too."

"See you in a few?" Sophia responded quickly.

She accepted the grunt as confirmation and watched as Mac stepped out the door and let it fall closed with a loud thud behind him. She stood, in the middle of the shop, rubbing the worn leather between her fingers until she heard the sound of his truck engine start up and she heard the gravel cracking beneath his tires. Then she went and flipped the breakers. In the dark, she fumbled around the familiar space, cursed something she stumbled over, and left the shop to go home and get ready for the party that would celebrate Mac's retirement and the full change of ownership of the shop.

Her shop.

It always had been her place, ever since she'd had a single thing to call her own—or a single person to share it with. It always would be her place and she'd fight to keep it going. Because now, it really was hers.


	7. Long Way 'Round - Daryl and Michonne

**AN: So this was in response to a request that wanted another look at the scene/time from Long Way 'Round when Michonne cuts her hair. I'm not certain it's what the person had in mind, but I hope it's still enjoyable. **

**Taking any requests for deleted/extra scenes from any fics. The more detail you give, the more likely you are to get what you want. Almost all characters welcome. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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It was hair. Plain and simple, it was just hair. It was dead cells and whatever it was that bound them together. Whether it was there or not didn't really make a difference. It changed nothing about who Michonne was. It changed nothing about her life or her family. It didn't change the journey she'd taken to get to where she was today and it didn't change anything about what lie ahead of her. It was just hair.

Standing in front of the mirror after she'd bathed, Michonne studied her reflection. She could see her face more clearly now, but she wasn't certain that was a great thing. She felt different. She felt almost strange.

And foolish as it may seem if she were to say it out loud, she wasn't sure that she felt as much like a woman as she'd felt only a few hours before.

She'd never shaved her head before. Her mother wouldn't have heard of that. Her hair was her glory. That's what she'd said. She was to be proud of her hair. She was to take care of it and to show it off. If it wasn't on her head, she certainly couldn't show it off. And Michonne had always taken very good care of her hair. Maybe, since all this had happened, she'd been a lot less dedicated to her routines, but she'd still found time to tend to things.

Now her reflection was very different. In a way, it felt like she had let go of a lot of her past. It felt like it was just another thing gone that was a link to the Michonne that she used to be before all this happened.

It would have been silly to say that she wasn't sure that she felt herself as much of a woman at the moment as she had before she'd shaved her head. Her clothing hadn't changed her feelings of femininity. The less than ladylike work that she did on a regular basis didn't make her feel less like a woman. Being covered in Walker guts and blood didn't strip her of her feelings of innate womanhood. Certainly her hair held nothing of her femininity. It was just hair.

Sadie, too, had cut hers off. Carol kept hers cut short. Several others around the community often put the scissors to their hair and cut it willy nilly because the length and shape mattered so little these days. She didn't think them any less women. They spent every day together—almost every waking hour—and Michonne would never have told Carol that her short cropped hair made her less of a woman. And she knew, from experience of having shared a home with her for so long, that Tyreese certainly didn't think it made her any less a woman.

So why was she being so hard on herself when she never would have said these things to someone she cared for?

The answer to that was simple. She was kinder to those she cared about than she was to herself. She was more aware that her words would hurt Carol, for instance, than she was aware of what they might do to her.

Daryl had already said that he liked what she'd done. He'd already said that she was _real pretty_. But he would say that. No matter what, he would say that.

Michonne finally left off staring at her reflection in her bathroom mirror and went to the closet. She found the most delicate looking nightie in there that she could fine. Baby pink. Soft and silky and the epitome of all things girly and delicate. She slipped it on and adjusted it before she returned to the bathroom.

Her body wasn't as curvy as it once had been. Maybe, to some, that was a good thing, but right now she longed for some of those curves. The lean muscle, at this moment, and the strong muscles of her shoulders and arms made her feel even more an imposter in the outfit. She seemed to be preparing for a masquerade ball of sorts.

Quietly, Michonne crossed the hall and slipped into Carol and Tyreese's room. Everyone was downstairs getting the children down. She'd excused herself knowing that everyone else was more than capable of handling things. Once she was in their room, she apologized quietly to Carol and rifled around in the drawer where she knew that Carol kept most everything that constituted as her "prized possessions" or "favorite trinkets". Somewhere in there she knew that there were a few partially used lip stains and such that Carol had collected like a squirrel over the years. She didn't wear them for people to see—unless the person in question was Tyreese—but Michonne knew they were there.

"_It just makes you feel...girly,_" Carol had said once, feeling she needed to defend what brought her pleasure to Michonne. Michonne understood it clearly at the moment. Finding one she thought she might want to use, Michonne pocketed it, closed the drawer, and slipped back across the hall.

In the bathroom, it helped, but not entirely. It wasn't the kind of gloss that she wanted, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and especially not when she'd stolen this one from her friend as it was.

Michonne was still waging war with her reflection when she heard the bedroom door creak open. Daryl came into the bathroom carrying a pot of water.

"You already bathe?" He asked, not looking at her yet since he was focused on getting the hot pot to a steady surface before he took his eyes off the shifting water.

"Yeah," Michonne said quietly.

Daryl put the pot down and looked at her then. A half smile played across his lips, but he didn't say anything right away. He started to come out of his clothes to take advantage of washing off with his bathwater while it was hot, but he watched Michonne while he did it.

She felt a shiver run through her. Being watched like that—she needed it.

"You uh—that's nice, 'Chonne," Daryl said.

Michonne smiled to herself. A poet, her husband was not, but it worked for her.

"You like it?" She asked.

He blushed slightly pink and only a little of the redness could be credited to the possibly scalding water he was using now to scrub himself. Other parts of his anatomy, after all, were at least partially responding to the question for him.

He cleared his throat and focused a great deal of attention on the lathering of his body.

"It's—nice," he said.

"You said that one already," Michonne teased.

Daryl chuckled.

"Where'd you get the lipstick?" He asked. "You don't hardly wear nothing like that."

"Borrowed it," Michonne responded.

He looked at her, slightly concerned, and she smiled.

"But I wiped all the germs off," she teased, winking at him.

Michonne felt her body relaxing. She leaned against the bathroom counter and unashamedly watched Daryl as he washed his body off. Aware that she was watching him, he kept glancing at her, offering her a half smile, but then returning to what he was doing.

After all this time and two children, she could still make him nervous.

Without asking, Michonne took the washrag from Daryl and moved to wash his back for him. For a fleeting moment he looked at her with confusion at having his rag taken, but then he quickly realized that she intended to assist him and he turned and offered her his back to wash. She took her time, and once it was washed, she kissed his skin a few times and then ran the rag back over the places to wash away the lipstick that she'd blotted there.

"You really like my hair?" She asked, still lazily drawing on his back with the cloth. He didn't protest. He simply put his hands on the bathroom sink and stood there allowing her to continue the action.

"Yeah, I do, 'Chonne," Daryl said.

"You don't—wish I hadn't shaved it?" Michonne asked.

He hummed.

"It's hair," he said. "I mean—I liked you when you had it. I like you now that'cha don't. It don't really matter. Besides..."

But he didn't finish saying what he might have been considering adding to that.

"Besides what?" Michonne pressed when she was sure that he wasn't going to continue.

He hummed again, this time drawing it out a bit more than before.

"Safer to have it short," Daryl said. "Walkers can't grab it. People neither. I like—knowing you're safe. As safe as you can be. That's—really all that matters, 'Chonne."

"You still think—I'm sexy?" Michonne asked.

Daryl tensed up. Michonne felt it in his muscles.

"I told you that you're pretty," Daryl said.

"I didn't ask if you thought I was pretty," Michonne said. "I asked—if you still think I'm sexy. If you still think—I look like a woman?"

Daryl turned around, a laugh escaping him as he did. He looked at Michonne, brow furrowed.

"What the hell, 'Chonne?" He asked. "You think you don't look like a woman?"

"I just..." Michonne stopped and sighed. She was honest with Daryl. That's what they did. They were honest with each other. It was what had gotten them this far. "Daryl—I want you to..."

Daryl laughed at her. He laughed at her, when she wasn't really in the mood to be laughed at. Granted, it wasn't a belly laugh, and it was really just a chuckle, but he laughed. He put his hands on her waist, gripped her, and swayed her toward him.

"What is it, 'Chonne?" He asked. "What you want? Just spit it out."

She made a face at him to make it clear she didn't appreciate his finding humor in her momentary inability to stop the starting and stopping.

"I want you to make me feel like you don't think I'm any less of a woman," Michonne said. "I want you to make me feel—sexy. Right now. Right here."

He hesitated, and Michonne felt her stomach do an odd lurch at his concerned expression. Finally, he shook his head at her.

"Not here," he said. "This damn bathroom ain't been cleaned in who the hell knows when. But..."

Without warning, he reached and Michonne knew exactly what he was doing when he moved to lift her off her feet. To keep him from straining his back too much, or possibly toppling both of them to the floor, she quickly moved to wrap her arms and legs around him and make the transition easier.

He carried her from the bathroom, quickly growing darker thanks to the failing of what little bit of light they got from outside, and into their bedroom where he deposited her onto the bed in such a way that she bounced slightly.

If she'd thought he might have been considering refusing her, she knew she was wrong now. Immediately he brought his lips to hers and she chased after his when he pulled them back. He caught her bottom lip and nipped it. She returned the favor. He massaged her breasts through the nightgown that she'd never bothered taking off and she scratched the freshly cleaned skin of his back.

His fingers dug into her skin as he slipped them under her and kneaded her body. His hands travelled around offering a rough massage while they explored her skin and she smiled to herself at the way that he shivered and momentarily lost his focus when she nipped his earlobe and sucked it as an apology.

When he pulled at the nightgown, Michonne helped him get it over her head and she scratched her short nails down the muscles of his arms while he greeted her breasts which he hadn't seen for hours at the very least.

And when he finally joined them together, she quietly whispered in his ear that she wanted him to fuck her—no playing nice. Not this time. And after he shivered at the request, the tremble running through her body too, he obliged her.

When he finally rolled to the side, panting, Michonne was shaking—but it was a welcome feeling. For a moment, she simply lie there, but it wasn't long until Daryl had come back, finding her in the bed again, and he wrapped an arm around her to slide her closer to him before he kissed the side of her face.

"Good enough?" He asked.

She could hear the smirk in his voice even without looking at him. She could hear that he was proud of himself. He always was. She let him have it, though.

"Mmmm...perfect," she said.

The hum he let out was self-congratulatory. She let him have that too.

"For now," she said. She smiled at him when he lifted himself to hover his face over hers for a moment and look at her in disbelief. She raised her eyebrows at him. "Well—you can't expect that to last me too long," she said.

"You just say when," he said, dipping his head to kiss her again. She returned the kiss, lifting her head to make it last just a little longer than it might have. "So long as it ain't no time in the next—hell I'd say an hour or two."

Michonne laughed to herself when he dropped back beside her and snuggled against her.

"An hour?" She said. "You're slipping, old man."

"It's a slippery slope," he said. "But—old man or not, you're stuck with me."

Michonne hummed in agreement.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," she said.


	8. Broken Mirrors - Daryl and Carol

**AN: This was a request for the Broken Mirrors universe. **

**As with all other "pieces" in this collection, it's not an official "chapter" of the story. Rather it's a possible "what would happen" for a given situation. **

**I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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While Carol got dinner started, Eli sat in the living room floor and played with his trucks. Diligently he moved load after load of Legos from one side of the room to the other with the dump truck after he carefully loaded them up, a block or two at a time, with the toy backhoe that Sophia had bought him. The transfer of blocks from just in front of the stairs to just in front of the television was serious work. It had to be done with focus and determination—and three year old Eli had more of that than most children his age seemed to have.

In between her tasks in the kitchen, Carol walked to the living room to glance at the boy, check on his progress, and make sure everything was fine. Every time she checked on Eli, she checked the clock and counted down the time before she could reasonably expect Daryl to get home.

Either her clock was broken, or Carol was a little too anxious to see her husband, because it seemed like it had barely moved since she'd come in the door.

It had all happened very differently this time than it had with Eli.

Carol had been suffering from a common, run of the mill cold, that had left her unable to breathe normally for what had felt like months. She'd done everything she could for it at home, including buying a dehumidifier that Daryl said was almost as loud as her lumberjack snoring, but it hadn't seemed to pass. She was drained. Everything she had to do seemed to take everything she had to offer. She was dragging before her day even started. She'd only finally broken when the cold-turned-possible-flu had taken an even more dramatic turn for the worse and sent her to her knees in the bathroom, retching over even something as simple as toast for breakfast.

That morning, Carol had called and gotten a doctor's appointment. She called in to work to say that she'd be late, and then she'd dropped Eli off at preschool on her way to the doctor. She'd gladly given them samples of each and every one of her bodily fluids that they'd requested and she'd recounted her symptoms for two nurses.

Despite her dislike of stripping down for the doctor, she'd sat on the table in her paper gown and anticipated his arrival to the small room. She hoped that he might have some kind of magical shot or pill to offer her—something fast-acting and miracle-working—that would take the flu away and leave her feeling like herself again. And she'd actually been a little disappointed when he'd walked in empty-handed to start his examination of her.

She'd asked him what he was going to give her and, when he said he didn't have anything to give her, she'd immediately asked him if she'd managed to come up with some kind of super-flu that had stumped him beyond his medical knowledge. She had expected him to laugh, as he did, because she'd meant it as a joke, but she hadn't expected him to tell her that what she had was something he saw almost every day—and it would take care of itself in probably six to seven months. A more specific timeline, he assured her, would be provided by her OBGYN.

_They hadn't even been trying. They hadn't actively been trying to avoid it, but they hadn't actively been trying either._

Carol hadn't been able to focus all day.

She still couldn't focus. That was made clear when, caught daydreaming while she watched Eli making the trek back and forth across the living room floor, she was rudely made aware of her lack of focus by the shrill sound of the smoke detector going off. As soon as it started, Eli abandoned his work and started to cry, startled by the noise. Carol ran into the kitchen, yanked open the oven, and got out the pan that held the charcoaled garlic bread to stop it from producing anymore smoke while it started to smolder.

It wasn't serious, but it could have been.

Carol fanned at the smoke alarm with a towel, but she soon abandoned her efforts to go and rescue her son from the horror of the unknown. She scooped the little boy up and hugged him against her while she went back to fan the alarm.

"It's OK, Eli," Carol promised him. "It's OK. Mama wasn't paying attention. She burned some bread. That's all. It's OK."

"Loud!" He screamed at her, burying his face against her neck and dampening the skin there.

"I know it's loud," Carol said. "Here—let's go open the door, OK? We'll open the door and the windows and the smoke will go out."

"The smoke go outside?" Eli asked, his voice still shaking from his tears.

Carol laughed to herself.

"Yes," she said. "The smoke will go outside and the alarm will be quiet. Can you tell it to be quiet?"

"Be quiet!" Eli commanded, not that the alarm was listening.

"Tell it—Mama knows she burned the bread," Carol said, stopping to open one of the windows as best she could with one hand.

"Mama know she...mama know she burn bread!" Eli commanded.

With the job of telling the smoke detector all that it needed to know about the situation, Eli was forgetting that the sound was scary and loud and altogether unpleasant. Forgetting that the sound was harsh on his ears made him forget to cry, and that at least relieved a little stress of the moment for Carol.

And everything that was going on, it seemed, helped Carol to forget that she was supposed to be nervously keeping track of each second that ticked by on the clock.

When Carol opened the front door and stepped out on the porch with Eli, sucking in the clean and cool air as best she could through her stopped up nose, Daryl was already coming up the porch steps.

"That the smoke alarm?" He asked as he came toward Carol.

"I hope you don't mind spaghetti without garlic bread," Carol said.

"Mama burn bread!" Eli announced proudly, as though it had been a shining moment in Carol's domestic life.

"Sounds like she sure did," Daryl said. He grabbed Eli from Carol the moment that the little boy held his arms out in his direction, and disappeared into the house with him. A moment later, the howling from inside stopped and Daryl reappeared in the doorway.

"How'd you turn it off so quickly?" Carol asked. "I tried fanning it."

"Took the battery out," Daryl said. "Just let's not burn the whole place down in a half hour or so and I'll put it back in. Oven's off and that bread is D-O-A."

Carol laughed to herself.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I really am. I know you like bread with spaghetti."

Daryl shrugged.

"It's bread," he said. "Light bread'll eat just as good, and we got a whole loaf of that. Where's the spaghetti, though? Didn't see it at the scene of the accident."

"In the refrigerator," Carol said, laughing to herself. "I made it last night. After you went to bed. We can just heat it up."

Daryl nodded.

"I got time to shower?" He asked.

"You've got time to do whatever you want," Carol said. "Eli and I'll warm up the spaghetti and it'll be ready and waiting when you are."

"Tracked mud on the floor," Daryl said. "Just so you know."

Carol laughed again. He was usually good about removing his shoes at the door, but the alarm had stirred them both up.

"It needed to be mopped anyway," Carol said. "Go. Take a shower."

Daryl's only response to her command was to pass her the little boy back. Standing by the door, he toed off the offending boots and put them on the towel that was put there for them to rest on every evening. Then he disappeared back into the house and went directly toward the bathroom, stripping off his clothes as he went.

In the kitchen, Carol threw away the bread that was burned too black to save. She buckled Eli in his booster seat to keep him from being underfoot and she offered him his coloring book and crayons to entertain him while she alternated heating bowls of spaghetti in the microwave and cleaning up the dirty patches tracked on the floor.

She was just taking the last bowl out of the microwave—the warmest and largest that she'd offer to Daryl—when she felt the pressure of Daryl's palm pressed flat against her back to announce that he was there behind her. Carol put the hot bowl on the counter, closed the microwave door, and turned around to look at him.

He was clean and shirtless, which was apparently how he intended to eat his dinner, though the tan lines that he had were almost dramatic enough to make it look like he was actually wearing a shirt. She smiled at him and he raised his eyebrows at her.

"Need help?" He asked.

Carol shook her head.

"This is the last bowl," she said.

Her pulse picked up a notch and her stomach turned. She had no amazing way of telling Daryl the news that she'd gotten that morning. She'd spent half the day trying to think of something—some wonderful way to tell him that he'd remember forever—but she'd come up with nothing.

"Why you lookin' at me like that?" Daryl asked. "I do somethin' wrong?"

Carol laughed to herself and shook her head.

"No," she said.

"You pissed about the mud?" He asked. Carol shook her head again. "Listen—I ain't pissed about the bread. Just bread. I meant what I said. I don't mind the light bread. I can make a spaghetti sandwich with it and it suits me just fine. You know Eli likes spaghetti sandwiches too. Hell—he'll be tryin' to get you to burn the bread every time."

"It's not the bread, Daryl," Carol said.

"Alarm scared you?" Daryl asked.

"No," Carol said. "Well—actually, yes. It did. But—it doesn't have anything to do with the bread or the alarm. You know I've been sick..."

"Yeah I been waiting for it to hit me or Eli, big as you are on sharing your germs," Daryl teased.

Carol felt an odd rush of relief at the teasing. She needed it at the moment. She hadn't realized how nervous she'd be, or even how nervous she really had been all day, and she needed the lighthearted teasing that Daryl had to offer when he wanted to give her a hard time.

She shook her head at him, finally feeling like she could sincerely smile at him a little.

"These aren't germs that you're going to catch," Carol said.

"No?" Daryl asked, looking a little concerned himself.

Carol shook her head and was mindful to keep her own face as relaxed as possible. She didn't want him to be worried. She didn't want him to think the worst simply because he didn't know what was going on. And both of them, they'd learned over the years, could have a bad habit of automatically jumping to the worst possible conclusions about things.

They had to work, almost daily, to keep each other on even ground.

"No," Carol said. "But—maybe I did kind of catch them from you." His brow furrowed, but he didn't look quite as concerned as he had. Carol's smirk was making it difficult for him to worry too much.

"What the hell you talkin' about?" Daryl asked. "I ain't sick. Healthy as a horse."

Carol bit her lip and nodded at him.

"Me too," Carol said. "And—I'm not sure. I'll find out tomorrow, but I think the baby might be too."

Daryl looked at her. He stared at her and Carol saw his throat bob as he swallowed a couple of times like he was trying to swallow down something that had gotten stuck in his mouth.

"You takin' Eli to the doctor?" Daryl asked. Carol tried to bite back her smile just a little. She shook her head. "Then what the hell you talkin' about?" Daryl asked.

"The doctor said my cold would take care of itself," Carol said. "The flu or whatever—it would take care of itself. It'll just—take a few months. The only catch is that, at the end of all that? Daryl—we're going to need to fix that guest room up."

Daryl swallowed again, in rapid succession.

"Fix it up?" He asked.

Carol smiled because she could see the look on his face. He knew what she was talking about, but he hadn't let himself believe it. Not just yet. She nodded her head.

"Yeah," she said. "Fix it up. For someone new. Or—probably for Eli to move there."

"You mean...?" Daryl asked. Carol nodded at him. "You mean you...?" He asked.

"_We_," Carol corrected. "Eli isn't going to be the baby anymore."

Carol didn't know what she expected Daryl's reaction to be, but she hadn't expected the reaction she got. She'd imagined that maybe he'd cheer. Maybe he'd make a toast to the baby or to her. Maybe he'd try to explain the whole thing to Eli. Instead, he reached and wrapped his arms around her. He pulled her into him and he ducked his head, resting it against the side of her neck in a warm hug. And, for a moment, he stood there simply holding the hug.

Carol closed her eyes and returned the embrace, not trying to stop herself from sighing at the feeling of calm that rushed over her as quickly and completely as the anxiety had come over her in waves before.

After a moment, Carol patted Daryl's back with her hand.

"Your spaghetti is going to get cold," she said.

Daryl laughed to himself, but he did pull away from Carol. He turned quickly, showing her his back, and she saw him move his hand like he was wiping at his face.

"Gotta eat," he said. "Gettin' late and—he ain't had no bath yet. Can't go to bed too late. And—don't want it bein' too late when we call Soph. Gonna call her after dinner, ain't we?"

"If you want to," Carol said. "I didn't know if we should maybe wait and tell her on Friday? When she comes over?"

Daryl shook his head, his back still to Carol.

"Call her," he said. "She'll wanna know right away. Be pissed if she don't find out until Friday." Daryl cleared his throat loudly. "I'ma go—wash my hands."

"OK," Carol said, not pointing out that he'd just showered or that the kitchen sink was just as good for washing hands as the bathroom sink was. "Daryl," she called as he disappeared into the hallway to go all the way to their bathroom for a simple handwashing.

"What?" He called back.

"I'm happy," Carol said. "Are you?"

"Reckon you know," he called back, leaving it at that.

Carol smiled to herself and moved his bowl to the table before she sat down to cut up the spaghetti noodles for Eli so that he could eat them easily. Daryl didn't need to say any more. He hadn't even really needed to say anything. The hug—the warmth of which Carol could still feel around her body—had said enough.

_She did know. _


End file.
